


Sheer Heart Attack

by Severina



Category: Die Hard (Movies)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 05:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20040568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: He was in bed in a hospital room. Okay, that one was a no-brainer. Hospitals got a smell, like urine-scented floor cleaner.  He could be in a coma and he'd still know he was in a hospital.





	Sheer Heart Attack

**Author's Note:**

> Written for DW's smallfandom fest for the prompt "grow up, old man".
> 
> * * *

"I think he's coming out of it," Matt said.

It was definitely Matt's voice. John would love to open his eyes and take a look at the kid. Looking at Matthew Farrell was one of his favourite things, second only to touching him. He'd never realized he was such a tactile person until Matt came into his life and refused to leave. Now he takes every opportunity he has to touch the kid: a brush against his arm as they pass in the hall; fingers carding through his hair as they slouch together on the sofa while one of Matt's inane reality shows plays on; a palm on the small of his back when they move together making Sunday breakfast. Covering him with his body in the double bed that he'd always thought was the perfect size for one until he found a second person to share it with.

His fingers twitched now to touch, but even that tiny movement sent a shot of pain shearing down the small of his back and into his hip. Felt like that time he took a header down the stairwell from the third floor in that warehouse in Queens, bouncing off each landing as he passed it. Spent two weeks in the hospital for that one, but he nailed Pompano's ass so it was worth it. Scumbag wouldn't be selling smack to no more schoolkids, that was for sure.

Someone stroked his forehead, and he was so lost in the memory of that bust that it took way too long to remember that it was Matt and not Holly who soothed him. 

His hand twitched again, and the fingers that caressed his forehead moved to curl around his palm. Definitely Matt's hand, 'cause John never failed to tease him about how his hands were as smooth as a used car salesman's patter since he never did a goddamn lick of work in his life, which was Matt's cue to protest loudly and vehemently that poking at a keyboard all day while sucking back enough carbonated soda to drown Tibet was legitimate work until John took _his_ cue and kissed him long enough and hard enough to shut him up.

He'd sure like to kiss the kid now.

It took John three tries to open his eyes and lift his head. He squinted against the light – why they gotta always keep the fluorescents so goddamn bright, that’s what he wanted to know – and looked around the room. 

Observation. It's what makes a good detective. 

So he learned a few things. 

He was in bed in a hospital room. Okay, that one was a no-brainer. Hospitals got a smell, like urine-scented floor cleaner. He could be in a coma and he'd still know he was in a hospital.

A nurse was just leaving, the back of her Mickey Mouse smock disappearing into the hall.

Matt was sitting beside him, his long dark hair a tangled mess. He'd been bugging the kid for weeks now to get it cut, even pretended to drag him into the barber one morning when they were out for breakfast. But truth be told, he loved that hair. He loved the way it hung all dark and sleek down Matt's back when he got out of the shower. He loved the flyaway ends peeking out from Matt's toque on a winter morning. He loved to bury his nose in it when they made love.

The most important thing John learned was that there wasn't a giant cinder block on his chest, though it sure as shit felt like it.

He hissed as he eased back, which made Matt jerk up from his contemplation of the floor tiles and convulsively squeeze his hand. "John," he said. Just that one word, his name, but boy oh boy was there a world of love and concern and worry in that voice. 

He wanted to reassure the kid, tell him that nothing could keep him down. He'd spent months reminding Matt that there was nothing special about the things he did, that he just happened to be the guy on the spot when shit needed to get done. But now he wished that he was the supercop that Matt always claimed he was. John fucking McClane. Unstoppable. Invincible.

He wanted to say all those things, but he didn't think Matt would believe it anymore.

"Did ya get the license plate of the truck that hit me?" he finally decided on. He almost didn't recognize his own voice. Sounded like he swallowed a bellyful of gravel.

"Wow, that's… original," Matt said. "Did you come up with that while you were lying there or did you think of it on the ambulance ride?"

John smirked, 'cause that's his Matty. Probably best not to mention to the kid that he doesn't remember an ambulance ride. Or a trip through the ER, which is presumably where the ambulance ended up. He doesn't really remember much beyond breakfast that morning – pancakes and coffee – and thumbing through the paper before deciding to go outside and tackle the yard work before it got too goddamn hot to function. Climate change was a bitch.

Matt hadn't been home then. He'd left early to meet with some bigwigs from Brandt, Davis and Coe. Something about a firekit and a rootwall. Some of that tech stuff Matt was always spouting to him was starting to sink in. He'd have to tell Matt later.

John felt the grin morph into a frown as he tried to remember the rest. Breakfast, Matt's big meeting with the virus people, long-winded and completely biased write-up in the sports section about the Yankees chances this year (slim to none, in his opinion), thinking about pruning down the hedges and then…

He lifted his hand to pinch his nose, which was when he discovered they'd stuffed a couple of those oxygen thingys up his schnoz. Also that he was hooked up to about eleven different IV's (okay, two). A quick glance at his chest and he ran his hand along a few of the sticky EKG pads as well.

"Just tell me it wasn't another Gruber," he drawled.

Matt made a noise that sounded half like a laugh and half like he'd just swallowed some gum, and a weight lifted from John's chest. Not really, of course, because it still felt like the jolly green giant was using him for a foot rest, but with that snort-laugh he knew that Matt was going to be all right. And since he'd made a promise when they got together that he'd never hurt the kid – not ever, not deliberately, not inadvertently, not physically or emotionally or even fucking spiritually – he still found he could breathe a little easier.

"You don't remember," Matt said.

It wasn't a question, but John shook his head anyway.

"John… you had a heart attack."

"Huh," John answered. 

Of all the things he could have guessed, heart attack would have been pretty damn low on the list. Because even though he _wasn't_ a goddamn supercop he still kept himself in fucking good shape. Cardio and weights at the gym twice a week, swimming at the Y Thursday nights, a little boxing with Joe when their shifts lined up right. He could still outrun half the young punks in his department. 

Yeah, he would have picked 'long lost Gruber' before 'heart attack' as his reason for taking up space on yet another hospital bed.

"You were mowing the lawn?" Matt continued. "And all of a sudden you started staggering. You made it to the driveway – Mrs. Davies, she was outside washing her sidewalk, you know how she does that thing where she wets down the cement even though the city has _told_ us that we have the potential for drought conditions and we should be conserving—"

"Kid," John said.

"Right," Matt said, waving the hand that wasn't clutching John's in a death grip. "Mrs. Davies thought you were trying to make it to the house when you face-planted onto the cement. She called 9-1-1. If she hadn't been there—"

"She was," John interrupted, cutting that thought off at the pass. 

"Right, yes, she was, she absolutely was," Matt agreed. Maybe a little too quickly. Like maybe John had been too quick to slot him into the 'gonna be alright' category. Maybe like he'd gone through a dozen scenarios where Essie Davies _wasn't_ there in the right spot at the right time, because Matt had a mind like a runaway train and he could so easily get derailed. Sometimes it was amusing, sometimes annoying. It was always impressive. 

The best thing to do was steer him on to another track.

"So what ya figure?" he asked. "Maybe another thirty minutes before they let me get the hell outta here?"

"John!" Matt gasped out.

Before Matthew Farrell came into his life, John had never seen an anime figure. Before Matthew Farrell came into his life, John had never even _heard_ of anime. But four years and change after the fire sale, he'd now seen more anime than he'd ever imagined existed, and looked at dozens of Matt's comic books (though in the comics that weren't really called comics the anime was called something different too, but his head hurt too much to think about that right now.) The point was that when Matt's eyes blew out like that, he looked like some stick figure drawn by a Japanese artist in a poorly lit studio in Tokyo. 

"Matt," he replied.

Matt released his hand. Apparently whatever he was going to say required the use of both arms for maximum flailing. "You could have _died_! They're going to _operate_! I had to sign some papers when you were out of it and I called Lucy and even Holly's on her way, and Jack is somewhere in Berlin on the backpacking trip so they don't even know when they'll be able to reach him, and they want to go in and look around and they'll probably put in a stent, that's like a—"

"I know what a stent is, kid," John said. 

Maybe he'd picked the wrong track. This one seemed to be leading Matt to crazy town.

But he couldn't seem to get off it himself, couldn't seem to shake the thought that if he just jollied around enough Matt would stop going through all the What If's that John saw behind his eyes. What If Essie hadn't been outside, What If the operation found more blockages, What If something went wrong on the operating table.

What if he died.

He'd called Holly, for Christ sake. Lucy he could understand in the midst of a shit ton of worry and strain, but Holly?

Okay, round two. John liked to call it the machine gun approach. A little more difficult, required a bunch of thinking on his feet, but he was good at that. Even with a moon-sized headache. Must've hit his head on that damn cement.

He sighed heavily, even though it put a strain on his chest and jeeeeeeeezus, that hurt. "All this fuss for a little heart bobble."

"A little—"

"We should send Essie Davies some flowers. Or a fruit basket."

"A fruit—"

"You know," John said, "one of those pineapples shaped like a heart. With little cut up strawberries to represent the blood flowing through the arteries. And maybe," John cocked his head, considering, "… huh, what do you think they could use for the aorta?"

"Are you actually—"

John snapped his fingers. "Ehhhh, a heart, though? Might be a little too spot on. Maybe a soup of the month membership?"

"The… I can't even… That can't be a… I don't even know what you're—"

"Hey, how long do you think they're gonna be before they come get me for this stent thingmabob?" John looked toward the closed door, then back to Matt. Wiggled his eyebrows. They weren't nearly as effective as the caterpillars the kid had growing on his forehead, but they were expressive enough when they had to be. "Think we got time for a little horizontal mambo?"

Aaaaaaaand that was the one.

Matt threw up his hands, spluttered a series of vowel sounds that John only heard in situations like this. And occasionally in the bedroom. He finally settled on, "Did you actually just say 'horizontal mambo'? Out loud? Where people can hear you?"

John patted the bed with his IV-less hand. Threw on his best leer.

Matt choked out a laugh. "Grow up, old man," he said. "You know how much adrenaline I've got flowing through my body right now? You couldn't handle me."

John eyed Matt up and down, for the first time noticing that he was still in the dress shirt and tie he'd worn to his aborted meeting. The shirt was a dark brown that seemed to make Matt's eyes into those fathomless pools that the poets talked about; John had picked it out. The tie featured a giraffe wearing glasses and a bow tie with a bunch of mathematical mumbo jumbo in the background. John had intended _that_ as a joke gift. Of course it was Matt's favourite of his three ties. The shirt was rumpled, the tie was at half mast, he'd already noted that the hair was a mess. And suddenly the ol' horizontal mambo gag didn't seem like such a joke.

"Hmmm," John mused. "Sure like to try."

"Yeah, well…" Matt looked up when the door opened.

John thought he _might_ actually have been considering it.

But then the nurse who was the Disney fan hustled in, IVs were adjusted, the bed railing was pulled up. There was talk about his vitals and scribbling on a chart and a whole lotta 'okay Detective McClane we're just going to—' but John didn't listen to any of it. The doctors knew what they were doing. He'd been under the knife enough times to know that he didn't need to listen to the nuts and bolts. 

He kept his eyes on Matt. Watched the slow and easy rise of his chest, the way the light from the window deceptively turned the tips of his dark hair red-gold.

"I'm gonna be okay," he said.

Matt nodded. "I know."

"Hey," he said before they could wheel him away. "What happened to the lawnmower?"

"Oh, the lawnmower kept going," Matt said. "Went right across the grass and over onto Mr. Grazinski's yard before it toppled. _Destroyed_ his azaleas. He's gonna kill you when he gets home."  



End file.
